 Why Women Should Vote? by Jane Adams This is LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. For many generations, it has been believed that women's place is within the walls of her own home. And it is indeed impossible to imagine the time when her duty there shall be ended, or to forecast any social change which shall release her from that paramount obligation. This paper is an attempt to show that many women today are failing to discharge their duties to their own households properly, simply because they do not perceive that as society grows more complicated, it is necessary that women shall extend her sense of responsibility to many things outside of her own home if she would continue to preserve the home in its entirety. One could illustrate in many ways. A woman's simplest duty, one would say, is to keep her house clean and wholesome and to feed her children properly. Yet if she lives in a tenement house, as so many of my neighbors do, she cannot fulfill these simple obligations by her own efforts because she is utterly dependent upon the city administration for the conditions which render decent living possible. Her basement will not be dry, her stairways will not be fireproof, her house will not be provided with sufficient windows to give light and air, nor will it be equipped with sanitary plumbing unless the Public Works Department sends inspectors who constantly insist that these elementary decencies be provided. Women who live in the country sweep their own dooryards and may either feed the refuse of the table to a flock of chickens or allow it innocently to decay in the open air and sunshine. In a crowded city quarter, however, if the street is not cleaned by the city authorities, no amount of private sweeping will keep the tenement free from grime. If the garbage is not properly collected and destroyed, a tenement house mother may see her children sicken and die of diseases from which she alone is powerless to shield them, although her tenderness and devotion are unbounded. She cannot even secure untainted meat for her household. She cannot provide fresh fruit unless the meat has been inspected by city officials and the decayed fruit, which is so often placed upon sale in the tenement districts, has been destroyed in the interests of public health. In short, if a woman would keep on with her old business of caring for her house and rearing her children, she will have to have some conscience in regard to public affairs lying quite outside of her immediate household. The individual conscience and devotion are no longer effective. Chicago One Spring had a spreading contagion of scarlet fever just at the time that the school nurses had been discontinued because businessmen had pronounced them too expensive. If the women who sent their children to the schools had been sufficiently public spirited and had been provided with an implement through which to express that public spirit, they would have insisted that the schools be supplied with nurses in order that their own children might be protected from contagion. In other words, if women would effectively continue their old avocations, they must take part in the slow-up building of that code of legislation, which is alone sufficient to protect the home from the danger's incident to modern life. One might instance the many deaths of children from contagious diseases, the germs of which have been carried in tailored clothing. Country doctors testify as to the outbreak of scarlet fever in remote neighborhoods each autumn, after the children have begun to wear the winter overcoats and cloaks, which have been sent from infected city sweatshops. That their mothers bend their stockings and guard them from taking cold is not a sufficient protection when the tailoring of the family is done in a distant city under conditions which the mother cannot possibly control. The sanitary regulation of sweatshops by city officials is all that can be depended upon to prevent such needless destruction. Who shall say that women are not concerned in the enactment and enforcement of such legislation if they would preserve their homes? Even women who take no part in public affairs in order that they may give themselves entirely to their own families, sometimes going so far as to despise those other women who are endeavoring to secure protective legislation, may illustrate this point. The Hullhouse neighborhood was at one time suffering from a typhoid epidemic. A careful investigation was made by which we were able to establish a very close connection between the typhoid and a mode of plumbing which made it most probable that the infection had been carried by flies. Among the people who had been exposed to the infection was a widow who had lived in the ward for a number of years in a comfortable little house which she owned. Although the Italian immigrants were closing in all around her, she was not willing to sell her property and to move away until she had finished the education of her children. In the meantime, she held herself quite a loop from her Italian neighbors and could never be drawn into any of the public efforts to protect them by securing a better code of tenement house sanitation. Her two daughters were sent to an Eastern college. One June, when one of them had graduated and the other still had two years before she took her degree, they came to the spotless little house and to their self-sacrificing mother for the summer's holiday. They both fell ill not because their own home was not clean, not because their mother was not devoted, but because next door to them and also in the rear were wretched tenements and because their mother's utmost efforts could not keep the infection out of her own house. One daughter died and one recovered but was an invalid for two years following. This is perhaps a fair illustration of the futility of the individual conscience when woman insists upon isolating her family from the rest of the community and its interests. The result is sure to be a pitiful failure. One of the interesting experiences in the Chicago campaign for inducing the members of the Charter Convention to recommend municipal franchise for women in the provisions of the new Charter was the unexpected enthusiasm and help which came from large groups of born-born women. The Scandinavian women represented in many Lutheran church societies said quite simply that in the old country they had had the municipal franchise upon the same basis as men since the 17th century. All the women formerly living under the British government in England, Australia or Canada pointed out that Chicago women were asking now for what the British women had long had. But the most unexpected response came from the foreign colonies in which women had never heard such problems discussed and took the prospect of the municipal ballot as a simple device, which it is, to aid them in their daily struggle with adverse city conditions. The Italian women said that the men engaged in railroad construction were away all summer and did not know anything about their household difficulties. Some of them came to Hell House one day to talk over the possibility of a public wash house. They do not like to wash in their own tenements. They have never seen a washing tub until they came to America and find it very difficult to use it in the restricted space of their little kitchens and to hang the clothes within the house to dry. They say that in the Italian villages the women all go to the streams together. In the town they go to the public wash house and washing, instead of being lonely and disagreeable, is made pleasant by cheerful conversation. It is asking a great deal of these women to change suddenly all their habits of living and their contention that the Tenement House kitchen is too small for laundry work is well taken. If women in Chicago knew the needs of the Italian colony, they would realize that any change bringing cleanliness and fresh clothing into the Italian household would be a very sensible and hygienic measure. It is perhaps asking a great deal that the members of the City Council should understand this, but surely a comprehension of the needs of these women and efforts toward ameliorating their luck might be regarded as matters of municipal obligation on the part of voting women. The same thing is true of the Jewish women and their desire for covered markets, which have always been a municipal provision in Russia and Poland. The vegetables piled high upon the wagons standing in the open markets of Chicago become covered with dust and soot. It seems to these women a violation of the most rudimentary decencies, and they sometimes say quite simply, if women had anything to say about it, they would change all that. If women follow only the lines of their traditional activities, here are certain primary duties which belong to even the most conservative women, and which no one woman or group of women can adequately discharge unless they join the more general movements looking toward social amelioration through legal enactment. The first of these, of which this article has already treated, is women's responsibility for the members of her own household that they may be properly fed and clothed and surrounded by hygienic conditions. The second is a responsibility for the education of children. A, that they may be provided with good schools. B, that they may be kept free from vicious influences on the street. C, that when working they may be protected by adequate child labor legislation. A, the duty of a woman toward the schools which her children attend is so obvious that is not necessary to dwell upon it. But even this simple obligation cannot be effectively carried out without some form of social organization, as the mother's school clubs and mother's congresses testify, and to which the most conservative women belong because they feel the need of wider reading and discussion concerning the many problems of childhood. It is therefore perhaps natural that the public should have been more willing to afford a vote to women in school matters than in any other, and yet women have never been members of a board of education in sufficient numbers to influence largely actual school curricula. If they had been, kindergarten's domestic science courses and school playgrounds would be far more numerous than they are. More than one woman has been convinced of the need of the ballot by the futility of her efforts in persuading a businessman that young children need nurture in something besides the three R's. Perhaps two only women realize the influence which the school might exert upon the home if a proper adaptation to actual needs were considered. An Italian girl who has had lessons in cooking at the public school will help her brother to connect the entire family with American food and household habits. That the mother has never baked bread in Italy, only mixed it in her own house and then taken it out to the village oven, makes it all the more necessary that her daughter should understand the complications of a cooking stove. The same thing is true of a girl who learns to sew in the public school, and more than anything else perhaps, of a girl who receives the first simple instruction in the care of little children. That skillful care which every tenement house baby requires if he is to be pulled through his second summer. The only time to my knowledge that lessons in the care of children were given in the public schools of Chicago was one summer when the vacation schools were being managed by a volunteer body of women. The instruction was eagerly received by the Italian girls, who had been little mothers to younger children ever since they could remember. As a result of this teaching, I recall a young girl who carefully explained to her Italian mother that the reason the babies in Italy were so healthy and the babies in Chicago were so sickly was not as her mother had always firmly insisted because her babies in Italy had goat's milk and her babies in America had cow's milk, but because the milk in Italy was clean and the milk in Chicago was dirty. She said that when you milked your own goat before the door you knew that the milk was clean, but when you bought milk from the grocery store after it had been carried for many miles in the country you couldn't tell whether or not it was fit for the baby to drink until the men from the city hall who had watched it all the way said that it was all right. She also informed her mother that the city hall wanted to fix up the milk so that it couldn't make the baby sick, but that they hadn't quite enough votes for it yet. The Italian mother believed what her child had been taught in the big school. It seemed to her quite as natural that the city should be concerned in providing pure milk for her younger children as that it should provide big schools and teachers for her older children. She reached this naive conclusion because she had never heard those arguments which make it seem reasonable that a woman should be given the school franchise, but no other. B. But women are also beginning to realize that children need attention outside of school hours. Then much of the petty bias in cities is merely the love of pleasure gone wrong, the overrestrained boy or girl seeking improper recreation and excitement. It is obvious that a little study of the needs of children, a sympathetic understanding of the conditions under which they go astray, might save hundreds of them. Women traditionally have had an opportunity to observe the plays of children and the needs of youth, and yet in Chicago at least they had done singularly little in this vexed problem of juvenile delinquency until they helped to inaugurate the juvenile court movement a dozen years ago. The juvenile court committee, made up largely of women, paid the salaries of the probation officers connected with the court for the first six years of its existence, and after the salaries were cared for by the county, the same organization turned itself into a juvenile protective league and through a score of paid officers are doing valiant service in minimizing some of the dangers of city life which boys and girls encounter. This protective league, however, was not formed until the women had had a civic training through their semi-official connection with the juvenile court. This is perhaps an illustration of our inability to see the duty next to hand until we have become alert through our knowledge of conditions in connection with the larger duties. We would all agree that social amelioration must come about through the efforts of many people who are moved there too by the compunction and stirring of the individual conscience, but we are only beginning to understand that the individual conscience will respond to the special challenge largely in proportion as the individual is able to see the social conditions because he has felt responsible for their improvement. Because this body of women, assumed a public responsibility, they have seen to it that every series of pictures displayed in the five-cent theater is subjected to a careful censorship before it is produced, and those series suggesting obscenity and criminality have been practically eliminated. The police department has performed this and many other duties to which it was obvious before simply because these women have made it realize that it is necessary to protect and purify those places of amusement which are crowded with young people every night. This is but the negative side of the policy pursued by the public authorities in the 15 small parks of Chicago, each of which is provided with halls in which young people may meet nightly for social gatherings and dances. The more extensively the modern city endeavors on the one hand to control and on the other hand to provide recreational facilities for its young people, the more necessary it is that women should assist in their direction and extension. After all, a care for wholesome and innocent amusement is what women have for many years assumed. When the reaction comes on the part of taxpayers, women's votes may be necessary to keep the city to its beneficent obligations toward its own young people. C. As the education of our children has been more and more transferred to the school so that even children four years old go to the kindergarten, the woman has been left in a household of constantly narrowing interests, not only because the children are away, but also because one industry after another is slipping from the household into the factory. Ever since steam power has been applied to the processes of weaving and spinning, women's traditional work has been carried on largely outside of the home. The clothing and household linen are not only spun and woven, but also usually sewed by machinery. The preparation of many foods has also passed into the factory, and necessarily a certain number of women have been obliged to follow their work there, although it is doubtful in spite of the large number of factory girls, where the women now are doing as large a proportion of the world's work as they used to do. Because many thousands of those working in factories and shops are girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two, there is a necessity that older women should be interested in the conditions of industry. The very fact that these girls are not going to remain in industry permanently makes it more important that someone should see to it that they shall not be incapacitated for their future family life because they work for exhausting hours and under insanitary conditions. If women's sense of obligation had enlarged as the industrial conditions changed, she might naturally and almost imperceptibly have inaugurated the movements for social amelioration in the line of factory legislation and shop sanitation. That she has not done so is doubtless due to the fact that her conscience is slow to recognize any obligation outside of her own family circle, and because she was so absorbed in her own household that she failed to see what the conditions outside actually were. It would be interesting to know how far the consciousness that she had no vote and could not change matters operated in this direction. After all, we see only those things to which our attention has been drawn. We feel responsibility for those things which are brought to us as matters of responsibility. The conscientious women were convinced that it was a civic duty to be informed in regard to these grave industrial affairs and then to express the conclusions which they had reached by depositing a piece of paper in a ballot box, one cannot imagine that they would shirk simply because the action ran counter to old traditions. To those of my readers who would admit that although a woman has no right to shirk her old obligations that all of these measures could be secured more easily through her influence upon the men of her family than through the direct use of the ballot, I should like to tell a little story. I have a friend in Chicago who is the mother of four sons and the grandmother of twelve grandsons who are voters. She is a woman of wealth, of secured social position, of sterling character and clear intelligence, and may therefore quite fairly be cited as a woman of influence. Upon one of her recent birthdays, when she was asked how she had kept so young, she promptly replied, because I have always advocated at least one unpopular cause. It may have been in pursuance of this policy that for many years she has been an arted advocate of free silver, although her manufacturing family are all Republicans. I happened to call at her house on the day that Mr. McKinley was elected president against Mr. Bryan for the first time. I found my friend much disturbed. She said somewhat bitterly that she had at last discovered what the much vaunted influence of woman was worth, that she had implored each one of her sons and grandsons had entered into endless arguments and moral appeals to induce one of them to represent her convictions by voting for Bryan. That although sincerely devoted to her, each one had assured her that his convictions forced him to vote the Republican ticket. She said that all she had been able to secure was the promise from one of the grandsons for whom she had a special tenderness because he bore her husband's name. That he would not vote at all. He could not vote for Bryan, but out of respect for her feeling he would refrain from voting for McKinley. My friend said that for many years she had suspected that women could influence men only in regard to those things in which men were not deeply concerned. For when it came to persuading a man to a woman's view in affairs of politics or business it was absolutely useless. I contended that a woman had no right to persuade a man to vote against his own convictions. That I respected the men of her family for following their own judgment regardless of the appeal which the honored head of the house had made to their chivalric devotion. To this she replied that she would agree with that point of view when a woman had the same opportunity as a man to register her convictions by vote. I believed then as I do now that nothing is gained when independence of judgment is assailed by influence, sentimental or otherwise, and that we test advancing civilization somewhat by our power to respect differences and by our tolerance of another's honest conviction. This is perhaps the attitude of many busy women who would be glad to use the ballot to further public measures in which they are interested and for which they have been working for years. It offends the taste of such a woman to be obliged to use indirect influence when she is accustomed to well-bred open action in other affairs, and she very much presents the time spent in persuading a voter to take her point of view and possibly to give up his own quite as honest and valuable as hers, although different because resulting from a totally different experience. Public spirited women who wish to use the ballot as I know them do not wish to do the work of men nor to take over men's affairs. They simply want an opportunity to do their own work and to take care of those affairs which naturally and historically belong to women, but which are constantly being overlooked and slighted in our political institutions. In a complex community like the modern city, all points of view need to be represented. The resultants of diverse experiences need to be pulled if the community would make for sane and balanced progress. If it would meet fairly each problem as it arises, whether it be connected with the freight tunnel, having to do largely with businessmen, or with the increasing death rate among children under five years of age, a problem on which women are vitally concerned, or with the question of more adequate street-car transfers in which both men and women might be said to be equally interested, it must not ignore the judgments of its entire adult population. To turn the administration of our civic affairs wholly over to men may mean that the American city will continue to push forward in its commercial and industrial development and continue to lag behind in those things which make a city helpful and beautiful. After all, women's traditional function has been to make her dwelling place both clean and fair. Is that dreariness in city life that lack of domesticity, which the humblest farm dwelling presents due to a withdrawal of one of the naturally cooperating forces? If women have, in any sense, been responsible for the gentler side of life which softens and blurs some of its harsher conditions, may they not have a duty to perform in our American cities? In closing, may I recapitulate that a woman would fulfill her traditional responsibility to her own children if she would educate and protect from danger factory children who must find their recreation on the street, if she would bring the cultural forces to bear upon our materialistic civilization, and if she would do it all with the dignity and directness fitting one who carries on her immemorial duties, then she must bring herself to the use of the ballot, that latest implement for self-government. May we not fairly say that American women need this implement in order to preserve the home? End of Why Women Should Vote by Jane Adams, read by Anita Sloma Martinez on June 19, 2019. The Young Woman on the Farm by Martha Foot Crow. Introduction by Martha Van Rensselaer. This reading is from the Cornell Reading Courses published by the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. It is dated May 1, 1914. The Department of Home Economics at Cornell University is interested in the country girl in America. Much is done for the farmer's wife in the belief that she shares to an equal degree with the farmer himself the opportunities and responsibilities of the farm in building up rural progress. At the present time the girls are deciding whether they will leave country life for city occupations. The opportunity for a young woman to earn money is greater in the city than in the country and the woman of today has become an economic factor to be considered in the business world. Unless she marries she must have money of her own and even if married she is not averse to handling a share of the income. Shall the girl who desires financial independence go to the city in order to earn this income or shall she find industrial opportunity in the rural community? Another tendency with the country girl is to go where she will have more company and recreation than she finds in the country. Can rural life be developed so that she will find enjoyment there rather than be compelled to seek it in the cities where the game of life is harder to play and where social opportunity such as can be found among the friends at home will be harder to obtain. Must be granted that the country girl should have relaxation and recreation if she is to become a well rounded, useful woman. What can be developed in the country that will increase the play spirit and standardize country games? As the business of farming progresses women are needed to take care of the home life which must be developed in larger degree as the business increases. Most parents desire that their daughters should not work so hard as they themselves have been accustomed to work. And with this in view they have sacrificed much in order to enable the young persons to leave home. Has not that policy been a mistake in one sometimes? Is not the abounding life of the country girl needed in order to standardize household duties on the farm? To simplify farm home labor and to give new life to the social forces of rural districts? Should she not give time and study to learning how to do this? What are the possibilities of labor saving devices in the farm household? The boy will not stay at home with the old fashioned plow. Neither will the girl stay by the broom and the dish pad if the vacuum cleaner in the well-grained sink can be obtained. Many girls and boys are turned away from the farm because they hear mother and father say so often that farming is a poor business. The child is made to feel that store keeping or doctoring or some other occupation is much better than farming. If the farmer does not take pride in his calling his children will not. If the mother finds only drudgery in her household duties the daughter may partake of the same spirit. The mother's point of view has been influenced by weariness and discouraging conditions. The daughter may find a rosier hue in life than her mother does because she is less fatigued and weather beaten. But we grow weary much sooner when our attitude of mind is unhappy toward our piece of work than when it is happy. Shall we dignify farm housekeeping by good equipment and scientific management and create a young woman a zest for the work that calls to them? In the present widespread movement for country life progress the question that the young woman will promptly ask is am I doing my share? Professor G. W. Frisky says in the challenge of the country that men can never solve the rural problem without the help of women. Such a statement is this without a strong appeal to the younger women for the future and all its possibilities lie in their hands. Value of the country girl to the farm. We wonder whether the country girl realizes how important her place is in the structure of the rural community. She has a very definite part there and it is a valuable one. As the acknowledged maker of home comfort and the foreordained leader of sociabilities in the rural neighborhood she has a service that no one can take from her hands. In fact what the young woman on the farm does or does not do, the part that she takes in the social life and in the organizations in her vicinity, her recreations and her work, all her activities and fine have a bearing on the refinement of the farm home and the farm community. On the younger woman therefore rather than any other class depends the ultimate success of farming as a satisfactory community life. Work at the farmstead. We know that there is a large amount of work to be done in the farm home but farmers daughters in this country are very brave and capable and ready to lend a hand. As a general thing the young woman has it in her power to make her work all drudgery or she can transform it into a pleasure. How to do this is for her to study out. The farm as a business. It used to be believed and said that the business of the farm ought to be holy in the hands of the farmer and his sons. It is now understood that the work in the house is an essential part of the farm business and that in the remainder of the labor of the farm the wife and the daughters have just as keen an interest as have the father and the brothers. Moreover many a woman is nowadays undertaking the operation of the farm itself and is making good too. In the late novel entitled The Wind Before the Dawn a picture is drawn of a woman who took hold of a farm that had been mismanaged. She brought it up to an almost ideal state of productivity. She used good judgment and planning. She kept things ship shaped and she seceded. There are many counterparts to this experience in real life and they are found in all parts of this country. It is therefore possible for us to believe that every daughter can grow to be an aide to her father and his business as a farmer. And that gradually she may enter into full responsibility for some part of the farm business. Or that perhaps if it should ever be necessary for her to do so she may become a successful manager for all the activities of a farm. New Industries In the farm home of early New England days the labor of the woman included not only all the common work that falls to the hands of women in the present day but also the spinning and weaving, the dying and fulling, the dress making and tailoring, the candle making and soap making and many other industries that now along with those mentioned have gone out of the farmhouse and taken up their boat in the factory. In those days the hands of the women were full of wage earning labor. Today also there are many women and especially young women who feel that they need some addition to their earning opportunity. And to these many doors are now opening. The revival of our ancient industries offers an alluring prospect although this may not be the most practical field. Is it not generally the most sensible thing to take the opportunity that stands by one's own garden gate? Why not then make a careful study of the farm conditions right at home in order to find out whether there may not be some fruit or vegetable product going to waste that can be utilized by the excellent modern methods of canning and preserving so that the family may be economically supplied with delicacies all the year round. And some extra quantities may be sold that will bring a good income. Something like this should be possible for any energetic and capable farmer's daughter. Perhaps again as a result of this discussion of the young woman's duty and opportunity in the rural community she shall have many ingenious suggestions from girls all over the country as to clever ways of earning money. This is what we greatly desire and to this end may we ask that question number six on the discussion paper be answered with considerable fullness that no good suggestion may be omitted. There are now over six million country girls in our land. Does it not look as though this body of eager, buoyant young women might add something valuable to the welfare of our rural life. They could but be of one mind as to the formation and expression of their ideals and as to the practical means of realizing those ideals in actual life. Extracts from some letters from farmers' wives. Now that we farmers' wives have learned so many things in our reading courses such excellent truths about the chemistry of food and about sanitary conditions have been taught how to work, how to rest, how to beautify our homes, how to stay young and to be lovable and lovely. I would like to talk a little bit about how we may keep our children in the rural home. At the beginning I would suggest that no one should ever in their hearing deplore the dullness and drudgery of farm life. Rather let us teach them from infancy to prize its pristine quiet and peace. I would dress the boys and girls as well as my means would allow and in no way different from the young people who live in the town. I should hope that my boy would never hear the remark made concerning him. He looked like a regular old farmer. As far as possible I should let the boys and girls do what they wanted to do. If they wanted to plaster the walls of their rooms with posters that did not appeal to my taste I would make quarts of paste for them. If they wanted 13 pillows for a cozy corner I would cut up Aunt Caroline's feather bed for them. I would read with them the books that they liked rather than the books that I thought they ought to like. And if they gloried in some wild tale of the sea I would have patience knowing that the time would come when they would enjoy the chambered nautilus and the king of the golden river. Why do so many boys and girls want to leave the farm? It is because unless the parents are thoughtful in regard to rearing and training the young minds the children on the farm fail to observe the beautiful possibilities and opportunities of the country life. Our apt to think that there is too much work for the amount of profit and no time for the sport so natural to children. A boy is so handy on the farm to run and do this, that and everything that the time goes without thinking that all work and no play is not a wise and profitable way to keep the children on the farm. As I look at it there are the same amusements for girls that there are for boys in the outdoor life. The girls enjoy caring for animals as well as the boys do. Also they like the care of flowers and even the plants in the garden and all over the farm. And they are more inclined than the boys are to see the beauties of everything in nature. Besides the girl can combine the life of the home with the life of nature thus having the better part. It seems to me that there is an erroneous idea that when a woman reaches mature years thoughts of reading and of the development to gain through it should be put away along with other childish things. This idea is sufficiently widespread to give a feeling of separateness to the sensitive woman who cherishes these ideals. Some knowledge of botany, geology and astronomy are for the mother particularly desirable in order that she may interest her children in nature. It is seldom indeed when on a starry night I do not remember with keen satisfaction that my mother taught me to know Orion and some other constellations when we looked out upon the heavens. A woman if she cannot read much can read a little. She can pour over a favorite book, a poem or even a sentence till it becomes a part of her very being. Culture depends not so much on multitudinous opportunities as making the fullest use of what we have. The problem of life consists in learning to make the most of all things whether they be material or the abiding things of the spirit. The Young Woman on the Farm by Martha Foote Crow